Post by aiyel on Sept 1, 2016 15:29:03 GMT

So I just had a run at Vesta, since I've not beaten it yet on my laptop.

I had an escort carrier and a silo ship.

I successfully dodged all the drones and missiles, and had everything but the cutter rendered unable to move. The cutter ended up succumbing to a long ranged bombardment of devastator missiles combined with a little work fromt he guns, but it left me with no more long-ranged weaponry. My drones intercepted the rest of the fleet and did immense damage to them, but not enough to outright kill more than one.

I encountered one group of drones with very little dV left, but it was enough for them to pop the remass tanks on my carrier before they went dead. My fleet was on an intercept course anyway, so I split the fleet and maneuvered the siloship in for a little gun play beforehand. Several minutes of long-ranged bombardment had them down to just one ship before I accidentally wandered into their range and got my face melted. In drifts my carrier, still on that ballistic intercept course. It enters the battle drifting away fromt he other ship, well outside its range, and proceeds to fill it full of holes. I mean, there was practically nothing left of this ship to begin with, and my carrier continues to hose it down, but with steadily worsening accuracy because of the deprating drift. The only thing wrong with my carrier, aside from expended drones, was a hole in the propellant tank. The loast remaining ship of the enemy fleet could have been used to strain pasta, and couldn't have been combat effective even if it still had engines.

I ran out my ammo trying to kill it.

This still counted as an enemy victory, with Overkill's taunting quote as her flagship drifts off into the void held together by fervent prayer.

Obviously, there needs to be more clear and practical conditions for a mission kill.

Post by argonbalt on Sept 4, 2016 23:57:36 GMT

I think part of the problem is that defining a kill in real life is very much like trying to define "death" in a human body. Is it the loss of heart functions? a human heart can be hesitated. Is it the brain?, even in permanent brain death, or severe shock much of the human body can be still alive(by percentage). In WWII they had a similar issue of chalking kills on missions. Is a tank dead if it is immobile? If the crew is dead, but could be replaced? if the main gun is knocked out, the reason a tank even exists?

Here is my proposed system

Level 1: Instant kill, if all hab modules in a ship are knocked out and destroyed/all remote controls the ship is marked as killed. This is the ideal kill, and called just that a KILLing of the crew.

Main Target: Crew modules

Level 2: Forceful disabling. If the main power supply of a vessel or vehicle is knocked out, then that is a perfect example of a disabling. This should result in a kill after a period of time though. This makes sense as the life support systems batteries run out and the ship is otherwise paralysed. The main target is still crew elimination, but you are instead rendering them disabled for a finishing blow, or sending them off in a luxurious aluminium coffin. Once again this is not instantaneous and should be set to a timer relative to the size of the ship and the engagement. For example an orbital patrol craft would be forcefully disabled if it was drained of power and sent of into the void after say a week of time(as the engagement was predicted to have only taken that long and supplies would be stocked for only that length)

Main Target:Radiators and Generators/Power plant

Level 3: Disarming. This is arguably the most humane and peaceful method, the primary issues here is to prevent your enemies movement and ability to fight WITHOUT jeopardising the crew's well being. So engines and weapons become the priority on this one. Just as in real life it is incredibly difficult to pull off.